Every company, from small businesses to large corporations, needs to set goals. Successful goals are ones that are attainable, measurable, and contribute to the strategic vision of your company. Whether your company is new and just starting out or an old company that's trying to remain relevant, clear goals are needed to ensure your business's success.

If you are interested to learn more about the importance of setting new goals and how to do that, keep reading. We've got some clear goal-setting steps for you.

Why Are Goals Important?

Goals can breathe new life into a stale business as well as provide direction for a new start-up. When you involve your employees in the goal-setting process, they take ownership of the success of the company. Goals also can boost the morale and productivity of your workforce.

Business development goals also inform the training your employees will undergo and how your employee development will take shape. For example, if one of your corporate goals is to change your employee culture, all of the training and development that you undertake throughout the year can include that as a focus.

Goals provide clear parameters to focus your activities around and provide a framework for your company during the strategic planning period.

New Company, New Goals

The first day at a new job is almost always overwhelming. From the small things that are a part of learning about a new organization and its culture to the large things like setting personal goals, there is a lot to be done at the start of a new position.

Remember that you want your goals to be attainable, so it's best to start small. No one is going to change the company in the first week of employment. A 30-60-90-day plan is the best way to achieve this. This plan allows you to identify your goals for the first 90 days of employment in a manageable way.

As you create your plan, be sure to allow sufficient time to reflect on your goals and how you met them and the ability to revise your future goals if necessary.

Old Company, New Life

On the other end of the spectrum, you might find that your company or business has grown stagnant. You've done the same thing year in and year out with no real attention paid to new goals. How do you revive a company like this?

It's smart to get employees involved in goal-setting, especially if these are long-standing employees. You will need their buy-in when it's time to implement the goals, so it's wise to get their input in identifying what needs to be done.

A SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is a smart way to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your company and where you need improvements.

Successful Goals to Ensure Success

Successful goals are necessary for companies at all levels. A clear vision for you and your company is the cornerstone of successful goals. Use these tips for goal-setting at all levels of your career and don't forget to explore the role of gratitude in goal-setting as well.

What goals come to mind when you think about your career? Your company? If the goal-setting process seems overwhelming, know that there are resources out there to help. Let My Big Idea help you set goals to ensure success.

Michele Bailey is president and CEO of Blazing Agency and My Big Idea®. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.

A good boss or manager is a rare asset to have. This is especially true in a day and age where everyone seems to bear resentment and loathing towards those in authority.

So, if you're lucky enough to have a good manager or boss who inspires more than they infuriate, it is important to be thankful and use the many ways to show gratitude to express your appreciation for them.

Besides the obvious perks of building a better relationship with senior management, it also helps your boss stay motivated, inspired and consistent. Plus, simply on a personal level, showing gratitude and appreciation, has proven to be excellent for your mental and emotional well-being.

While expressing gratitude in a professional setting might seem like an awkward endeavor, there are ways to make it work. Here are 4 simple ways you can show your appreciation.

1. Just Say "Thank You"

So, you're thankful? Say thank you! Managers, leaders, and bosses are people too - they're going to appreciate words of appreciation as much as anyone else.

Make sure you thank them for any moral support, words of motivation or assistance with your work. It's also a good idea to cater your words to the person you're speaking to. A personalized "thank you" is more effective than a generic one.

2. Write a LinkedIn Recommendation

If you truly believe in your manager's leadership ability or your boss's skills, a LinkedIn recommendation is a great way to go. This is a great way to keep things professional without seeming like you're trying too hard. Flesh it out, make it genuine, and only say things you actually believe.

3. Make the Most of Birthdays

Everyone's got a birthday, and it's a great opportunity to show some individually specific appreciation. Now, this will depend on the relationship with your boss. This idea may not be appropriate for everyone, but if it works for you, read on. Write a card to your boss, throw a surprise party with the help of your colleagues or invest in a meaningful giftthat you know they'll like. It's true that most workplaces do some version of this for their employers, but if you want to play a more significant role, just add a personal touch of your own with a small, special thank you gift.

4. Write Your Boss a Note

That being said, you don't need a birthday to give someone a gift or send them a note. If you're someone who has a way with words consider writing them a heartfelt (but professional) note or email expressing the many ways they've helped you develop your own skills. Also, mention your thanks for the opportunities they've given you to move forward in your career.

The Best Ways to Show Gratitude Come from a Place of Authenticity

It's understandable to be nervous about how your gratitude is going to be perceived. You don't want to appear like you've got any ulterior motive, but simultaneously you want to express your thoughts. The key here is to be authentic.

There are a lot of ways to show gratitude to your boss, but so long as you are genuine and say what you mean, they're sure to appreciate it.

Michele Bailey is president and CEO of Blazing Agency and My Big Idea®. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.

Note: although travel as we know it is on hiatus due to COVID-19, these kind ways of interacting with others are still applicable. Remember them when travel gets going again, but also think of them as you travel through your day now, which I bet feels like a foreign land! Simple trips to the grocery store are now very very odd.

Though travel is often stressful, showing gratitude instead of irritation will improve your trip satisfaction. Simple acts of kindness and showing thanks also enhances the lives of the strangers around you.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at three aspects:

Why you need to be grateful for the strangers you meet during your travels.How to be grateful when everything is going wrong with your trip.Examples of stressful travel situations and where instead of responding with anger, you find ways to show gratitude.

Keep reading to learn more about the science of gratitude and how it affects you and those you meet, even when traveling for business.

Why Showing Gratitude to Strangers Is Important

If you're a business person who must travel often, you've no doubt experienced your fair share of stress.

In times like this, practicing gratitude instead of exploding with anger is beneficial to you and those around you. Anger brings health risks for you and can cause strangers to feel intimidated and upset. Often the stressful situation, like a traffic jam on the way to make your flight, is out of anyone's control.

Everyone is doing their best, particularly those in publicly-facing customer service positions. Showing gratitude for a person's services might be the kind words they needed to hear to make it through a tough workday.

There are many ways to show gratitude when everything about your business trip is going wrong. The important thing to remember is sincerity. Maintaining a positive mindset and will help you choose gratitude when everything seems to be going against you.

Examples of Showing Gratitude Instead of Anger

Here are a few examples of where you can show gratitude and kindness instead of anger in situations where you may not have any control:

With the traffic congested, you're running late for your flight. Instead of taking your frustration out on the taxi/Uber driver, joke with them about the situation to put them at ease.You barely make it to the airport on time. Now you set off the detector and get pulled aside by a TSA agent. Instead of getting angry with them, which they deal with all the time, compliment them for their devotion to the job.You arrive at your hotel, but the hotel attendant at the front desk can't find your reservation. Instead of huffing and puffing about your booking being completed weeks in advance, keep a level head and provide any information that'll help verify your reservation. Once the matter is solved, speak with hotel management and compliment the attendant on their professional manner under stress.

Be Kind and Make the World a Better Place

Showing gratitude where you can, when you’re in a stressful situations is always the best practice. It will help to improve the moods of those around you, and will leave a favourable impression of yourself on others.

Michele Bailey is president and CEO of Blazing Agency and My Big Idea®. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.

According to a recent Gallop survey, more than half of Americans reported being constantly angry and stressed. The nation's collective negative emotions were considered at an all-time high at this point, and work-related stress is a major contributor.

However, nothing positive or productive comes out of pent-up negativity in a place of business. If you often feel angry at work, here's a novel idea: Try to turn your anger into gratitude.

The Case for Gratitude Instead of Anger

You may wonder: How do gratitude and anger correlate? How does one cancel out the other?

Although the two are on opposite ends of the emotional scale, it's not that difficult to associate anger with gratitude through a careful thought process. Your anger can fester or explode, neither of which is productive. However, anger can be productive if it turns into gratitude through a bit of self-awareness.

When you're angry, your attention is stuck on yourself. You are wrapped around your own feelings.

When you feel grateful, your attention shifts toward engagement with others, which can be especially useful at work. Also, gratitude is a relaxed feeling, which cancels out the stress caused by anger. Ultimately, in order to defuse your anger into something more productive, try to focus on a single goal: finding something to be grateful for in the situation at hand.

How to Show Gratitude When You Are Angry

Getting from angry to grateful is an exercise in self-awareness. The key emotion that bridges the gap between anger and gratitude is empathy.

Since empathy is a learned emotion, you can refine it and increase its impact on your daily life. For instance, instead of getting angry at a coworkers’ who threw away some important documents, take a moment to see the scenario from their perspective. Maybe the co-worker was having a difficult day, and the documents were thrown away by accident. Perhaps your colleague disposed of the paperwork while he cleaned out a messy cabinet in the name of being helpful.

Anger is a direct response to a violation of your own beliefs or a disregard of your feelings. However, when you take yourself out of the situation and look at it from the other person's perspective, your anger is defused. When you look for reasons why your co-worker threw out the important paperwork, you might find gratitude in his efforts to be helpful.

Why Show Gratitude When Someone Wrongs You?

The feeling of gratitude evokes several useful characteristics and emotions:

HumilityCalmProductivityCompassion

Each of those characteristics are especially useful in business. If your coworkers think you're humble and compassionate, they are more likely to get along with you. If your manager recognizes that you are often calm and engaged, this might result in a promotion.

Showing gratitude is a selfless act, but it can be rewarding for you in the long run. Beyond the professional incentives of gratitude over anger, you can also enjoy a more level-headed disposition in your everyday life.

How Anger Can Be An Agent of Change

Sometimes, anger stems from any injustice you witness on behalf of someone else. For instance, if you feel a co-worker is being mistreated by upper management, you may get angry.

However, even under that circumstance, gratitude can enable your anger to be an agent of change.

Think about it: Passion for activism is born of anger. For example, if your coworker is being discriminated against due to their race or disability, you can turn your anger into activism against the discrimination.

Need More Tips?

Overall, adapting gratitude as a response to your own anger is a useful self-development goal to aspire to. If you're often angry, that's not necessarily a flaw. The key is to solve the problem of anger by allowing it to morph into a kinder feeling.

Michele Bailey is president and CEO of Blazing Agencyand My Big Idea®. These two lines of business work congruently to support her clients’ success.